On episode 20 of Living Tarot, I break down the importance of having ethics in your intuitive practice. I go into great detail on setting up rules and boundaries with the type of work you want to do both with energetic boundaries with the spirit world and with clients.
- I talk about the importance of clearing yourself and your energy on a daily basis and grounding.
- I discuss being an ethical reader and what it means to have healthy boundaries.
- I give specific instructions on how to set those boundaries and how to hold them in your space so that you and clients feel safe.
- Ethical boundaries are at the core of having a trauma-informed practice.
- I talk about breaking down unhealthy energetic exchanges with in partnerships and family system
Connect with Sheila:
To book a tarot reading, virtual tarot party, or distance Reiki session with Sheila click here – https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=18090641
To read more about Sheila’s offerings click here – https://www.starsagespirit.com/services/
Or on Instagram www.instagram.com/starsagespirit
Transcript:
Sheila M 0:05
Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium, and creator of practical Tarot for everyday intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure and embodied the taro along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing. Empower yourself through intuition and live intentionally with the Tarot.
Hey there a tarot friend, I wanted to ask you for a quick favor. I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to get living Terrill out there in front of as many people as possible, but I can’t do it without your help. So for the month of November 2020, I am running a special contest. And the prize will be a career ahead tarot reading, which is a reading of the full view of the year ahead in your business or career. So if you would like to enter, head on over to Apple podcasts, and review Living Tarot, preferably with a five star review, and leave a comment about what you learned from the podcast, your favorite episode, or even questions that you might have, that you’d like me to answer on upcoming episodes, and then share a screenshot of that review over on Instagram and tag me at Star Sage spirit. And if you don’t have Instagram, you can always send a screenshot to my email.I’ll include more info about how to enter this contest over on Instagram, and in the show notes for today’s episode.
Hello fellow seekers and welcome back to Living Tarot. On today’s episode, I’m going to talk about something that’s pretty important as intuitive people. And that is boundaries. So my theme for November on the podcast really is all around boundaries, including some of the guests that I have coming in, and also my own episodes, but in particular today,
I want to focus on boundaries and ethics when it comes to being an intuitive person and living an intuitive life, and what that really means. And we’re really talking about bridging the gap between October where we were very focused on intuition into November where we’re focusing on boundaries. So kind of a combination of intuition, and ethics and boundaries in today’s episode, which might not sound super fun. But we’re also going to talk about how to protect yourself and your own energy. Because when we have good boundaries, it’s not just about not being in somebody else’s business. It’s also about protecting your own energy, clearing your own energy field, being kind to yourself.
So to start out, when it comes to being an intuitive person, whether you consider yourself to be highly intuitive, sensitive person, an empath, we tend to exchange energy with people on a daily basis without necessarily realizing it. Sometimes it’s obvious sometimes we, you know, we have that conversation on the phone with a friend. And when we get off, we just feel exhausted, like, completely drained. Like we, we were supporting this person supporting this person supporting this person. And now we just feel completely spent. Or we might feel like, perhaps you talk to a friend who’s going through something really emotional and upsetting, and you get off the phone with them and you feel upset and emotional, as if you’ve taken that on. And usually what happens in that situation is that you’ve acted as an energetic kind of sounding board for that person. And they’ve had the ability to and it’s not malicious, it’s just habitual. And especially in some of our interpersonal relationships, we will see this. But what really happens is that this person has kind of dumped their energy, their worries, their anxieties onto us, and we’ve taken them on and so afterwards, our friend might feel better, because they’ve kind of dumped that load on someone else. But we might feel worse. And so that is important to notice, like when things like that are going on, if you find yourself feeling that way, in interpersonal relationships where this can come up a lot, particularly within family systems, so either with parents, or with a spouse or partner, sometimes even with children, so we might find ourselves in this sort of energetic exchange where and you’ll see it in behaviors as well. So for example, a good example that a lot of people can relate to is, if you are traditionally the one that is doing a lot of cleaning and, and labor around the house, you might notice that other people will leave, you know, dirty dishes or dirty clothes or towels on the floor, or whatever it is, and have the expectation that you will clean that up, because it is labor that you have taken on. And so it creates this kind of weird energetic exchange where we are constantly like, putting too much energy out there. And the other people are passing that, that, that responsibility off to us, because they’re so used to the way that that exchange goes on. And this isn’t to say, don’t clean your house. That’s not what I’m saying.
But sometimes we do need to set boundaries there, if you put the dishes in the dishwasher, I will make sure everything gets washed, but otherwise, I’m not going to you’re gonna have to clean that up. And so, we will see this come up a little bit in those relationships. And also, you will notice it come up. You know, if you are a person that is particularly empathic, you might have strangers opening up to you about deeply personal things. So maybe you’re at the grocery store, and you’re in line, and somebody is like talking to you about their life, you know, and I’m like, deeply personal things, or I’ve had the experience of like, being in an elevator with someone and then just kind of like, completely opening up about like a deeply personal situation that I would never speak to a stranger about. So you might find yourself in situations like that. And that’s an exchange, also, because people can feel something in your energy where they can feel that you’re open to that kind of exchange. And it’s not like you’re not saying that you’re asking for it or anything, it’s just that people recognize something in your energy field that is more receptive. And so therefore, they meet that receptivity with, like a giving, unfortunately, is often in giving what they do not want to deal with, or what is unpleasant or uncomfortable to deal with. So that’s really where where this all kind of starts. It’s all an exchange. And it’s this isn’t about this isn’t to, to judge you or to make you feel guilt, or like you’re doing something wrong. It’s really just about noticing. And the reason I’m bringing up these specific examples is to give you ideas of how this might be showing up in your life, or how to notice if this is happening to you. So these boundaries are important for us, not just so that our energy is clear, and so that we aren’t getting worn out. But they’re also important because it’s about respecting other people’s privacy. And this is really important. Like, I can’t even It is hard to, to even fathom how important this is. And it might not seem that way. I think a lot of people when they think about being intuitive, or, you know, I’ve had people say things to me, about my gifts that kind of come from a misunderstanding of how they work, that you know, they would, they would be checking in, you know, on all these different people in their lives to see how they really feel. And it’s not, it’s not about that it’s not really appropriate to go to go digging around in someone else’s energy. And it is important to have strong boundaries around that. Because it’s not your business and privacy is really important. And ethics in intuition is really important. And just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do something. So just because you can send something or kind of tap into somebody doesn’t mean that you should and it doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate to and if you’re having trouble figuring out if it’s an appropriate thing to do think about if the shoe was on the So if your roles were reversed, how would you feel about that person tapping into you and your energy and kind of taking an intuitive peek at you. And if you find right away that you had a very visceral response to that, then stop doing that.
So along with that, it is important. You might be sitting there and saying, Well, I’m not doing this on purpose. Like, I don’t mean to pick this stuff up, how can I stop picking this stuff up from other people? What is going on that I I go through my whole day and and for some of us, who are more sensitive, and are able to work from home now, it’s been a little bit of a comfort. But you might have had the experience in the past of being at work and picking up stuff from coworkers or picking up stuff from clients. And you might think I really don’t want that I really don’t want this, but I don’t know how to stop getting it like how can I? How can I shut this down? How can I stop this in my in its tracks to you, I want to say you are in charge of this, you make the rules. So it’s your responsibility to set up what rules you want in place. And this is important because it is deeply personal to you. Perhaps you want to know certain things in in certain relationships. So maybe with your spouse, you want to know a little bit more than you would with, say a stranger on the subway with you. So it’s okay to set up rules around that. And I’ll give some examples of that in a moment. But you ultimately are in charge. So if you’re having that response, where you’re feeling like I don’t know how to control this, I can’t do that. Sheila is telling me to do this, and I don’t feel like I can do it, I don’t feel like she understands I completely understand because in the beginning, when I was going through my kind of spiritual opening, I was completely inundated I was really really overwhelmed. I was having a really hard time at work in in, in a professional environment. Because I I was picking up stuff from people that I knew it wasn’t appropriate for me to know. And I didn’t, I didn’t know how to control it. In fact, I avoided going to one in person meeting because I just I did not have control over it. And I was so nervous about picking up something that wasn’t appropriate that I just joined virtually. And it can be very disruptive, if you are sensitive, if you are going through some sort of either upgrade or change to your connection, it can be extremely overwhelming. So I was doing all of this stuff in the beginning without meaning to. And so that’s why, you know, everything that I talked about on this podcast is really born out of my own experience or the experience of clients of mine or students of mine, who have kind of come through over and over. And I’ve heard some of the similar complaints. And so that’s kind of what I use to formulate a lot of these things. So I had this experience as well, where I was just completely exhausted and terrified, basically, all of the time when I was going through this. So if you want things, if you are picking stuff up that you don’t want to pick up, if you are seeing things you don’t want to see feeling things you don’t want to feel, hearing things you don’t want to hear, you know, there’s so many different ways that our different gifts work. You can set rules, and how I would suggest doing this is sitting down. It doesn’t have to be in like meditation, it could also be going for a walk or something if you connect more deeply in that kind of environment. But wherever you feel safe and secure, so if that’s in bed, if it’s in a nice chair, in your house somewhere, wherever you feel good to then take a moment to sit down to do some breathing. And to call in whatever type of support you need, whether that is loved ones who are in spirit, whether it’s angels guides, if you’re religious, and there’s some sort of deity or you know, religious figure that you would connect with or that you like to work with in those situations. You can call in those spirits of the highest level for your highest good and and try to connect with them to help you set the best rules for yourself. And then think about about situations where something has come up where you felt uncomfortable, how could you make a rule around that situation that would make you feel more comfortable, or that would have you not have to deal with that thing at all. So I’ll give you an example.
I had the experience of complete overwhelm when my mediumship gift gifts started showing up again. And I felt like I was getting tapped by spirits kind of all the time, I would set up my Reiki sessions, and I still felt like I was having a hard time keeping, you know, I tried to protect the room. And I still felt like I was having a hard time keeping spirits of deceased loved ones out. And so I had a conversation with one of my teachers. And she talked to me about setting boundaries in this way. And so I set up a rule, that was, first of all, I only want communication from spirits of people who I know personally or am acquainted with, personally, I don’t want all of the spirits that are out there, because there are tons of them. And it’s too confusing.
So just setting that boundary was enough to make a significant difference in what I was experiencing on a daily basis. And from there, I set other rules too. So for example, no one can be, you know, no spirits can be in my room, when I’m getting ready for bed, like we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna be in the room, my bedroom at night, that’s my own personal time, I don’t want anybody in there. And that is a very strict rule that I enforce. And since setting, it has really not been a problem, and every once in a while, you might find that there’s some sort of intrusion on that boundary, but usually you can reinforce it very quickly again. And I’ve also set up rules like what I call like, the human rules for spirits. So sometimes spirits get, like, very excited, and like, really, you know, I’m around somebody who they want to talk to. And so they might like, really, really be in my face. But I set up human rules where I say, you can’t interrupt me or somebody else while they’re talking. Like you need to wait for your chance to talk. And things like in my, in my home, you can’t just be like lurking around the house, if you would like to talk to me, you have to come to the front door like a person would. And so just setting some of those boundaries helped me to not feel so jumpy, or like I was going to walk around the corner and find the spirit there, you know, it really settled things inside of my house and really handed the power back to me. And that was so important for me. And it is important for you to if you’re an intuitive person. Now, I am giving examples about mediumship. But it doesn’t have to just be that. So for example, in some of the other work I do, so when I do past life healing, initially, I was seeing everything I would kind of see it like almost like watching a little movie in my head. And I had to set some rules around that as well. Because often, especially in a healing environment, the lifetimes that were coming in were a lot of traumatic things, a lot of violence. And so I had to set some rules about what I was seeing and what I didn’t need to see. So you know, I had to remove some of that violence, from my vision. And it doesn’t, in any way affect the healing work that I was doing. And I feel much better not seeing that. And for the most part, I can kind of assume what happened without having to see and bear witness to it. And can still move through that healing without having to have it literally in my face. So you might want to start to set up some rules for yourself. So perhaps, you would like to not pick anything up at work. Or you would only like to pick things up. You know, when you open up to it, or you know, you you can kind of anything goes here and I would encourage you to set that time to go into that space where you feel very comfortable. And to maybe even write those rules down sometimes. For some of us, it’s hard to like, hold a sentence in our mind when we’re, we’re asking for this. So if something comes to you maybe write it down, maybe have a little list of rules.
And then you know you can use that as your touch point for everything that you’re doing. So, if you are at work one day, and you’re somehow picking up on something that you shouldn’t be, you can say, Nope, rule number three, we’re violating rule number three, right? Now, send this back out. And that’s really important because it really does give the power back to you. And it helps you to stop feeling like you are a victim of your own gifts, or you’re a victim of your own power. And really puts you back in the driver’s seat. And what’s also important about this is that you’re being an ethical person in terms of not invading someone else’s space. So if you are going through something deeply personal, and your boss, or your coworker knew about it, because they were kind of digging around in your psychic space in your aura, your energy, whatever you like to call it, how would you feel about that? You know, I really want you to think about that. Because I think sometimes, when we do have something new are happening, we really want to practice it, we really want to exercise it. We’re curious, we want to kind of tap into all these different people, maybe we want to check on exes, you know, there’s all kinds of stuff that can come up. And that’s okay, you know, that’s, that’s a human impulse. But my bet is that you would have plenty of people who you are friendly with who are thoughtful, good friends in your life, who would be willing to let you practice on them. And one of the most important rules that I set up is one that I keep in all sessions with clients, which is that I never want to know something, or hear something or see something that the client is not comfortable with me knowing hearing or seeing. So you, you might be like, what, what does that mean? So Meaning, if I’m doing a mediumship reading for someone, and there is something deeply personal that the person, the spirit that I’m talking to, has experienced or has done wrong to the client that is sitting with me, I don’t want to know something that is too private to that client.
Hey there, I wanted to remind you that this is a great time of year to get a career ahead tarot reading. This reading will give you a full view of the year ahead in your business or career. It’ll enlighten you as to the stories that you’re telling yourself about your work and business. It’s a full look at what feels true, what is true and how to work through doubt and imposter syndrome. We’ll talk about what obstacles you may be coming up against so that you can be prepared to meet them, and how to play to your strengths and where to focus your energy. Your session will be fully collaborative and offer you the opportunity to weigh your options and evaluate different career paths and offers. This reading is designed to empower you to make career choices that offer you the greatest opportunity for growth and expansion. And to consider things you might not have. clients who’ve had one of these sessions with me have been able to analyze job offers aligned new services and products with their value, and things like the timing to roll them out and felt empowered to negotiate five figure salary increases. This is the perfect time of year for this type of reading. And I don’t have a ton of availability around the holidays. So if you are interested, make sure you head on over to the show notes and look into booking a session today.
So I might still get something about it I might get you know what happens a lot in that situation is the spirit will tell me that there is something that’s private. That is not for me to know but that they want to take responsibility for or apologize for. And they will say that to me. And without a doubt every single time that has happened, the client has known exactly what I’m talking about. And I tell people that when they come in for a session, I won’t know anything that they aren’t comfortable with. And that applies to Reiki. It applies to Tarot. It’s extremely important to me because when you are setting up an environment in which people are trying to heal and trying to feel comfortable. And this applies to any work, you don’t have to be doing spiritual work because people know when somebody is digging around in their business, even if they’re not totally aware of it, they will be on edge around you. And so I set this up as one of my main intentions with all of the work that I do, because it’s extremely important for me to set up an environment where my clients can come in and be vulnerable without Feeling like something is going to go too far, or go outside of their comfort zone. That’s very important to me, it’s very important to me as a client of other readers as well. So I do really encourage you to respect that. And also, if you are a healer and a reader, we can sometimes and again, I speak from personal experience, have a tendency to want to go above and beyond and try to like fix something or like, fix something for the client, or, you know, tap in and try to like push things around a little bit.
And that is not for you to do it – Who are you to fix something for someone else,?you are holding space for them to have their own experience. And it’s not up to you to solve everything for the person. And when you do that, you’re really doing them a disservice because they aren’t getting the opportunity to, to heal themselves to participate in their own healing process, and to really learn to take responsibility. And something that I have seen, sometimes with other readers, or especially people who are newer to intuitive gifts, is that they can overstep a little bit. And you know, when it happens, maybe you’ve witnessed it, maybe you’ve done it yourself and then felt guilty afterwards. Again, no shame, we all learn from experience, and I am sharing this now. So that if you are doing it, you can stop. If you have done it in the past, you can be like, whoops, I won’t do that. Again. It’s not about judging ourselves, it’s about learning and committing to be better.
So it is really important to not offer a reading to someone who’s not asking for it, to not be digging around in someone’s business that’s not your own. And when you do that kind of stuff, you are really opening yourself up to things that are, you’re opening yourself up in a way that is not totally safe, and can create this sort of like strange attachment to someone else. And can open, you know, gateways for them to, you know, do do some damage to you maybe accidentally, but it can also do damage to to them and to you know, their psyche and their sense of comfort.
So I did want to talk about that. So if you are finding yourself in situations, particularly if you work in an environment where you’re around a lot of people, or maybe it’s kind of a toxic environment, you might benefit from doing just a little bit of energy maintenance. And I would encourage all of us to do this, even if we’re not even if we don’t explicitly find ourselves in that type of environment. When you are going out into either a crowd or if you’re going to work for the day, or whatever it is, I would encourage you if you’re going you know grocery shopping out in public anywhere where you’re going to be kind of exposed to a lot of people to imagine drawing your aura back in towards your body. And on next week’s episode, I’m going to be interviewing Eliza Swann, who wrote a book all about were us called Anatomy of the Aura. And we’ll talk a little bit more about some of these techniques. But I want you to imagine that you could kind of draw all of your energy back in towards your body. So it’s just kind of like a really tight outline around the outside of your body. So it’s very, very close to you. And what that does is that when you go out into these very public places and spaces, you will be able to not be picking up on the emotions, the feelings, the excess energy, the low energy, whatever it is of the people around you. And you will feel hopefully, much less exhausted when you come home. I will say in particular, it’s been important for me during the pandemic to do this when I’m grocery shopping. Because I find that it can be a very tense environment, less so now than at the very beginning of things but I still find it to be a little bit frenetic and very nervous energy in the store. So I will encourage you to try that and to see how it works for you if you notice a difference. And if you are a person who does healing work like myself, I will also do the opposite when I am working with someone so for example, it’s a little bit Different right now with the internet and doing all of my work virtually. But for example, when I was seeing clients in my space in my office, I would kind of push my, my aura out. So imagine my aura kind of filling the whole healing room that we were in, so that I am holding that space for the client to feel very safe and secure. Because I am making sure that the space is stable, that it’s full of my energy that I am not, you know, there’s no kind of like rogue energies wandering around. And that there is a boundary around that space, and that I’ve claimed it as my own. It’s not just out there for anybody to enter. And so doing that, even if you don’t do something that’s like traditionally healing, if you do if you’re a therapist, if you are an esthetician, or do facials, or skincare, or nails or hair, whatever it is, I’m imagining that’s kind of like your space, because the other thing that happens is when you have clients coming into that space, it it lets them know, like who who is in charge right now. And ultimately, you know, the client is in charge of their own healing, but it lets them know that they’re kind of, how can I say it kind of like energetically off the hook, they’re not going to have to make sure that they’re safe in this space, they can just be themselves. And that’s one of the things that I noticed that has really helped with.
Along with that. If you are a person, especially in any of those fields that I just mentioned, where you might have a lot of clients kind of coming in and out. And even if you’re not, it is extremely, extremely, extremely important right now, especially to be clearing yourself every day. And I’ll say a couple different things about this. So first of all, if you are doom scrolling on social media, if you are watching the news, obsessively worried about the election, I will encourage you to clear your energy every time you finish, so that you’re not carrying it around with you like a little anxiety bundle. So one of the ways that I like to imagine doing this, and I’ve heard a lot of a lot of spiritual teachers, everybody seems to do the same kind of exercise, where it’s almost like you imagine turning on like a showerhead of some sort of either color or like sparkling light that comes down through the crown of your head, and just kind of removes anything that’s not yours or anything that’s not serving you from your body, and then just allows it to dissipate to go back to wherever it came from. And to kind of clear you of any access or anything extra that kind of come in, or that you’ve picked up from anyone else. So that’s really important. And I would say if you do client work like I do, if you can do it after every single session, that’s awesome, it doesn’t, doesn’t have to be a long time I do it now it takes me maybe like one to three minutes to do the whole thing to just kind of clear everything out. And then after I do that clearing, I always make sure to ground myself also. So and that doesn’t have to be a visualization. I mean, that’s cool. But I find it just as effective to just either like stretch, move my body a little bit, feel my feet planted, sturdy on the ground, to do like a little forward fold.
And if that’s not accessible to you, you know, you can just feel all of the places where your body is in contact with a surface that supports you. So if you can’t stand if you’re if you’re in a wheelchair or something like that feeling, you know, everywhere where like your arms rest everywhere, maybe where your head rests, where you’re feeling that support, that’s really a good way to to bring that grounding into your body. Even if you just kind of like roll your neck around a little bit, feeling you’re a kind of physical body in whatever space that you’re in. So those two things really go a long way in terms of being able to manage your energy long term, and to not feel so depleted because even those of us even if you set the very strong boundaries, you will still have days where you’re feeling depleted or you feel like you’re taking stuff on and where there is a lot of stuff that can kind of get get stuck and particularly right now, because these are very anxious times. It’s it’s really important to notice how it’s affecting you To take your your power back a little bit. Because there are a lot of situations right now, where many of us are feeling powerless. And this is something that you can do. It’s a place where you can assert yourself. And it’s really important.
And then finally, the last thing that I want to talk about, which I will elaborate on, in a couple weeks on the next episode, where I talk about boundaries for the holidays, and family is meditating on some of the exchanges of energy that you’re struggling to break. And what I mean by this is, a lot of the time when we show up, in particular, in our romantic relationships, and like I said, in our immediate family, we might find that there is a particular energetic exchange, that is not really serving either of us. So it’s not really serving our relationship. And I don’t just mean romantic I can, that can mean with parents, with siblings, with children. Where we really feel like something is stuck, like we’re stuck in this pattern, we keep seeing this cycle play out that neither of us wants to participate in. And yet we’re doing it over and over. When that happens, I want you to think about sitting down, and then just taking a moment to connect to that exchange, and try to approach it less with like fear or anger or resentment, and more with curiosity. So asking questions, like, why is this so hard for me to break? What is it about this exchange that’s so challenging to give up? Because often what’s happening is we are afraid that if we it’s usually something like this, we are afraid that if we stop doing that, for that person, that they will resent us or they will, in some way, withhold from us something that we want, or feel like we are mean, or not a nice person or not a good partner.
And we feel we feel that way. And they might feel like you know, they don’t trust themselves to do that thing for themselves. So they keep putting it on you to do it for them. And so we you know, there’s there’s a lot of different ways that these things come up. That’s just an example.
But when we have those situations where it’s really hard for us to let go of that exchange, and we can kind of feel that connection and see that cycle playing out over and over, trying to get curious and asking those questions will will help you to start to let go of that a little bit. It doesn’t mean that suddenly, overnight, you’re going to be, you know, nailing it, absolutely not unfortunately, but at the same time, you will start to gain a little bit more clarity about it. And I’m betting that both of you will start to gain some clarity about it can be tricky. And like I said, I’m going to talk about it a little bit more in my next solo episode. But I do think that it’s important to notice and to be more curious than critical about those energetic exchanges that are harder to break. And I also want to mention that sometimes, especially in partnerships, there are times where we might need to carry a little bit more of the load because our partner might be struggling. And there’s also times where they might need to carry a little bit more of the energetic load. And that’s okay, you know, not everything needs to be in balance all of the time. Hopefully, over a lifetime, it kind of balances out, you know, you don’t always want it to be imbalanced either. But it’s okay for things to temporarily shift as well.
So I hope that you found that helpful, and educational. And I would love to hear what came up for you. If you tried some of these exercises, you can definitely send me a message on Instagram or send me an email. That’s all I have for us today. But I will be back next week and in two weeks to talk a little bit more about boundaries. So that’s all for today.
Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @StarSageSpirit and let me know what you learned, what surprised you, and what you’d like to hear even more of, as always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episode show notes, you can head over to starSagespirit.com